School Pictures

For the past few picture days, I have attempted to curl Dottie's hair. My girl's hair naturally has some wave to it, so when you add curls, crazy things happen. It took me a couple of years to figure out that with sponge rollers, you don't roll all the way to the top, or Dottie ends up looking like a poodle. Just curl the bottoms of the strands, and then that's more than enough, like in this picture:
However, last year I somehow forgot this trick to doing curls in Dottie's hair. So, the picture from kindergarten was pretty horrendous. And it wasn't just the hair. The curls ended up looking like she had a mullet because I used the tighter rollers in the front, the looser in the back. Then, her smile was one of those fake lifeless smiles that small children often do when asked to smile on command. I really can't even describe how bad the picture was. I think Dottie is a pretty cute little girl. But this picture was just plain embarrassing. I destroyed every copy that the school gave me. I think it's still in the yearbook, unfortunately.

This year, I wasn't going to let disaster strike again. I spent an hour trying to figure out the perfect braid to do in her hair. It was one of my own creations. I'm generally bad at doing hair, but I'm pretty proud of what I came up with:

This is what her hair looked like after sleeping on it and then going to a full day of school. But you get the drift.

I did have morning pictures, trying to practice smiling with Dottie, but she just ended up crying. It was too much pressure, apparently, to smile on command for her mother. So I'm hoping the school pictures will turn out okay? Or I might have to hunt down the photographer.